That Barack Obama has won Georgia is no surprise. That he apparently has won it by such a large margin -- perhaps exceeding 70 percent of the statewide vote, if early reports are true -- is a shock, and could portend trouble for Hillary Clinton nationwide tonight. Georgia's Democratic electorate, like South Carolina's, is about 50 percent black, and Obama has apparently won this constituency overwhelmingly. But if his statewide advantage over Hillary is really that large, it means Obama has done substantially better among white voters than he did in South Carolina.

The tight three-way race on the Republican side is good news for Mitt Romney. Georgia is one of several states for which his "true conservative" message (of the last week) was tailor-made, but there was a possibility that Huckabee -- with his appeal to religious conservatives -- would relegate Romney to a distant third. Romney needs to pick up a win in Georgia, but the fact that he's at least in competition right now suggests that other states -- like Tennessee and Missouri -- may be in play for him tonight.